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The generational shift occurring in the engineering sector is opening the eyes of many employers to what's most valued by a new round of graduates, and it's not money, but opportunities to get global experience.

Jennifer Bast, who works for AMEC in Calgary, is living it and seeing it first-hand.

"What I see in what the younger people bring to me is more of the continuous improvement side," she says.

"There are opportunities to transfer overseas - and interface with people across the globe."

As a new graduate coming into the engineering industry, one of the top things people look for is the opportunity to tap into a global range of knowledge and job opportunities, Bast added.

"When I came to AMEC, that was important for me."

Jacek Morawski, the director of oilsands for AMEC, said it's going to be a top recruiting challenge for the entire industry for the next few years.

"The boomers are retiring over the next number of years and that's going to put a strain on companies like ours," he said.

"We're going to need to be backfilling for those roles, but we have been preparing ourselves for that for the last number of years. Engineering projects can't be done only by senior people. You need to have a good distribution of staff."

Career development and access to significant projects is a key recruitment offer for the top talent coming out of university.

The transfer of knowledge from one generation to another is a big attractor when it comes to hiring the best.

"It's one of our biggest retention factors," said Morawski.

"Our young engineers are looking for mobility and to be able to move around. They're not married yet, in many instances, and we do encourage our engineers to go out to site assignments."

Whether it's Fort McMurray or Kuwait, opportunities for green engineers to tap into global work experiences is crucial to their overall development.

"You probably gain the most experience by having field assignments and by having assignments in other parts of the world," he said.

The transfer of knowledge from one generation to another is paramount to growing as an engineer in any discipline.

Mentoring and coaching are commonplace and increasingly seen as a drawing card when the brightest talent is looking for a job.

"It allows for the transfer of experience to the younger generation where there's a senior person managing a group of less senior people, intermediate people and junior people where the knowledge is transferred from him or her," said Morawski.

Bast advises young grads to ask questions when they're looking for their first job.

"It's up to each individual to reach out when they get to a new company and find those people," she said. "You have to ask for what you need."

As a new grad coming into a workforce that spans several generations, there is ample opportunity to work alongside people of all ages.

Each one has different things to contribute to your career development, she adds.

She started out as a process engineer and moved up the ranks through various lead positions and is now co-ordinating between the different sub-disciplines for AMEC.

She has worked with all ages and backgrounds.

"Our whole team is made up of different ages," said Bast.

After graduating from a chemical engineering degree program from the University of Saskatchewan in 1996, she got hired with AMEC in 2004 and moved to Calgary.

Ever since, she's been learning from her peers and that's part of what makes her job unique.

Not only can she tap into the talent in her local area, but she has the ability to talk to her peers in other regions of the world.

It's a valuable piece of learning from people with different perspectives and from more senior engineers.

At the end of the day, all are needed to perform well - and on budget - with a mixture of youthful eagerness and senior knowledge.

"You can't have only senior people that manage (and) are the technical experts," said Morawski.

"You need the teams of engineers and designers that are going to do the calculations all the background work - the numbercrunching, drawings - so you need the full gamut of experience and to be on budget."

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